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| JETSTAR 787-8 VH-VKK (CN 36237) File Photo |
That puzzling diversion of a Jetstar 787-8 on its way from Melbourne to Singapore to Darwin on Monday 21 December has been rated as a ‘serious’ incident by the ATSB, which the safety investigator defines as one that could have led to a crash.
The 335 seat jet was met by emergency response vehicles, and transfers to Darwin hotels for those on board, pending completion of their journeys.
Shortly afterwards Jetstar said that the diversion was a “precaution” following a fault in one of three airspeed indicators being noticed by the pilots.
Today the ATSB puts it this way:
During cruise, the crew reported difficulty maintaining assigned altitude followed by faulty flight instruments. A fuel dump was conducted before diverting to Darwin. The aircraft landed safely.Difficulty maintaining an assigned altitude is a compelling reason for not continuing a flight, and especially one through the increasingly crowded airspace over Indonesia in the latter stages of the flight to Singapore.
As part of the investigation, ATSB technical specialists will examine data from the aircraft’s flight data recorders to determine the factors that contributed to the airspeed fluctuations.
The early reports of the diversion were puzzling in that passenger accounts varied, with news reports variously claiming that there was an ‘icing’ problem mentioned by the crew or ‘storm’ issues, in what are often very bumpy skies at this time of the year over Australia’s Top End.
The aircraft; VH-VKE (CN 36230) landed on runway 29 in Darwin at exactly 5pm local time
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